Growing excitement in Italy for expat Lord McAlpine

Lord McAlpine is a well-known art collector but even a Rothko, of which he has owned a few, couldn’t compare with his love for his garden.

The Tory grandee and former adviser to Lady Thatcher owns a restored convent in Puglia, where he practises his passion.

“Hunting for plants is by far the most exciting form of collecting I have come across in my lifetime,” he tells this month’s The World of Interiors magazine.

“The exhilaration of tracking down a much wanted specimen is intense. It is the often unpredictable cycle of growth that controls your work. The collection is never complete.”

McAlpine lives at the 15th-century property with his wife Athena, with whom he runs a bed and breakfast not far from Helen Mirren’s Italian outpost.

During the Newsnight scandal that saw Lord McAlpine falsely accused of unspeakable things, he was described by a local as “extremely nice”, and “well behaved”, although it has been noted that he does not appear to have learned the local tongue. Then again, gardening is a universal language.